Brendan Smith

The American labour movement is once again facing a most controversial issue -- the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the KXL debate has largely centered around the environmental risks, from labour's perspective opening up the Canadian tar sands is often seen as an economic, not an environmental, issue.

And it's no wonder: Construction unemployment is double the national average and, from a worker's perspective, Keystone jobs will be good-paying union jobs in an economy that increasingly offers up only minimum-wage service work.